Let's face it, the package that is Alison Hood could turn even the most romantic lover of classical music into a cynic, at least momentarily. For a start there's the dress she wears in her publicity photographs; or rather the expanse of flesh it reveals, which now seems to be de rigueur for up-and-coming female performers in classical music. Hood's American press release links her to "a succession of beautiful performers - Sinead O'Connor, Dolores O'Riordan, Enya and The Corrs" and seems to pay as much attention to her looks ("dazzling in her classic Irish raven-haired beauty") as it does to her music ("dazzling in her incredible piano technique"). Making Alison even more of a PR person's dream is the claim that she has "slotted in some photographic modelling", and features in the current television campaign for the Irish Tourist Board.
All this hype might blind people to the true beauty in Hood's music, and to the sense of artistic integrity that steeled the classically-trained pianist's approach to her debut album, Romantic Themes and Celtic Dreams - The Nocturnes of John Field. Although 24-year-old, Irish-born, Dublin-based Alison describes herself as "a total romantic", she's also realistic enough to respond as most people would to lines such as "classic raven-haired Irish beauty".
"Oh God!" she exclaims, laughing. "I picked the dress, so I'm responsible for that. I chose it because it is by an Irish dress designer, Brid Nihill, and it's a period piece, supposed to suggest something sensuous and romantic, a hint of Dangerous Liaisons or Gone With The Wind, which is what I wanted, to go with the music. Commenting on the increasing tendency to use female sex appeal to sell classical music, Alison asserts: "I don't think it's wrong, if it helps get the music across to a broader audience." Nevertheless, she is aware that taking such a position is bound to upset some classical music purists; "But then they are bound to complain about a lot of things related to this album, aren't they?"
Such as the possibility that the purity of John Field's nocturnes has been polluted by the presence of Phil Coulter's Celtic sound-scapes, perhaps? One doesn't have to be a purist to argue that a nocturne by Field risks being destroyed by the addition of any extraneous musical details, even a note out of place.
"I've had that very reservation about this whole project from the start. I am one of those purists, which is why I was so terrified, at first, to talk to my academic colleagues about this," Alison responds. She's referring to the fact that she's currently researching a PhD "in the area of analysis and performance, mainly the piano music of Chopin" at Trinity College, Dublin, where she also lectures on the history of music and a course called "An Introduction to the Writing of Music".
"Even though I am involved in the academic side of classical music, I'm not a music snob," she continues. "And I know there are many people who love listening to classical pieces when they are brought to them in the right way. But they're not exposed to it because there is this ivory-tower aspect to classical music. I know people who are actually afraid to go to the National Concert Hall. I bring them and they say, in astonishment `I've never been here before!' Fortunately, that's breaking down a bit, but we need to go further. This doesn't mean adding drum beats to classical music and lowering standards. "There are ways to bring classical music to a broader audience and this album is my attempt to do that. I certainly don't see the arrangements, which were done by Phil Coulter and Dave Cooke, as damaging the music in any way. I think that John Field needs to be brought to a wider audience, especially in America, where he is practically unknown."
Alison insists that this is not to denigrate "in any way" what she calls "the wonderful work brilliant pianists such as John O'Conor and Veronica Sweeney" have done in terms of John Field's music. But she is clearly frustrated by the fact that many people still describe Field as an Englishman and are unaware that he invented the nocturne and was a "direct influence" on Chopin. It was during one of Alison's performances of Field's nocturnes at the Gaelic Roots Festival in Boston that she was spotted by an A&R man from RCA Victor/BMG Classics, which later lead to Phil Coulter being put in charge of this particular project.
"I've always been aware of the dangers involved," Alison elaborates. "Yet the point is that each of Field's nocturnes is left totally intact on this album. Every note is as he wrote it. In fact, I played all the music without the sound-scapes, which were layered on afterwards - including, at one point, my own cello solo. "As a classical pianist, I was very concerned about RCA's attempt to modernise the music, but I really do believe we can all stand over what we've done. People for whom I've played the album say it hasn't taken away from the music, but that at times, it enhances the nocturne, brings out the melody more. For example, I've been playing the Nocturne in G Major since I was nine and this recording still sounds as pure to me as the music ever did, partly because the sound-scapes are so subtle - sometimes just a chord left shimmering. And to tell you the truth, I would have stopped the project at any point, if I felt we were debasing or devaluing Field's music which, as I say, I've loved since I was a child."
Not everyone will agree with RCA's decision to give John Field's gorgeous Nocturne in G Major a new pop title: Midnight At The Waterfall, a fate that befalls all the nocturnes on this album. Even Alison's passionate interpretation of the Second Movement from Field's Piano Concerto Number 1 in E Flat, is now called O'er Moor and O'er Mountain, rather than Field's own parenthetical title, Within A Mile of Edinburgh Town.
"Again, if it makes the music more accessible, I don't mind," Alison says, "Although I must admit it is hard for me to remember the new titles." Apart from the classical side of her musical activities - playing Grieg in the National Concert Hall or taking master-classes from Diane Anderson in Brussels "on Prokofiev and Chopin" - Alison also plays what she proudly describes as "pop cello", and has recorded with Van Morrison and Shane McGowan. She regards as "immensely healthy" the fact "that more people are performing all kinds of music" these days.
"I was at a Shankerian Analysis Conference in New York - a very heavy, mathematical form of analysis - which they were applying to jazz and it was brilliant," she says. "And I was at another conference in London where they were analysing the Spice Girls, in a structuralist setting. And this month I'm doing a Royal Musical Association conference in Waterford, where I'll be playing two Chopin nocturnes and speaking about how analysis can affect your interpretation.
"Coincidentally enough, my album is being released in Ireland the same day. But I see no great divide between all of this, no one area of music as inherently `better' than another. It's all subjective, whatever gives you pleasure."
Romantic Dreams and Celtic Themes - The Nocturnes of John Field is on the RCA Victor/BMG Classics label.
